This was, however, one of the only occasions on which he was successful. Day after day both men and women were led off to execution. On one occasion a poor girl had run away from the ill-treatment of her master, and had taken refuge in the house of a decrepit old man. The two were brought up for judgment, when the king sentenced them to death, and decreed that their lives should not be taken at once, but that they should be fed and dismembered, bit by bit, as rations for his vultures every day until life was extinct. The dismayed criminals, Speke says, struggling to be heard, were dragged away to the drowning music of horns and drums. After he had been some time in the palace, he was introduced to the queen dowager. Her majesty was fat, fair, and forty-five. He found her seated in the front part of her hut, on a carpet, her elbow resting on a pillow. An iron rod, like a spit, with a cup on the top, charged with magic powder, and other magic wands were placed before the entrance, and within the room four Mabandwa sorceresses, or devil-drivers, fantastically dressed, with a mass of other women, formed the company. They being dismissed, a band of musicians came in, when _pomba_ was drunk by the queen, and handed to her visitor and high officers and attendants. She smoked her pipe, and bid Speke to smoke his. She required doctoring, and Speke had many opportunities of seeing her, so completely winning her regard that she insisted on presenting him with various presents, among others a couple of wives, greatly to his annoyance. She appeared to be a jovial and intelligent personage. On another occasion Speke, when introduced, found her surrounded by her ministers, when a large wooden trough was brought in and filled with _pomba_. The queen put her head in and drank like a pig from it, her ministers following her example. If any was spilled by her, they dabbled their noses in the ground, or grabbed it up with their hands, that not a particle might be lost, as everything that comes from royalty must be adored. Musicians and dancers were then introduced, exhibiting their long, shaggy, goat-skin jackets, sometimes dancing upright, at others bending or striking the ground with their heels like hornpipe dancers. The plaguy little imps of pages were constantly playing tricks, and seemed to delight in mischief.